Improves with every minute.

Rating: Null/10 (13 October 2007)

No major SPOILERS here.
Starts off as one of those European, "grand" (read: pretentious-looking), overly sentimental turn-of-the-century epics, but it gradually, steadily but firmly, starts growing on you. It's a highly idealized bio of a larger-than-life fictional character. I moaned when Roth, as a child, immediately learned to play the piano with great skill the day he first saw it. But, as I said, Roth plays a larger-than-life guy so anything goes; there are practically elements of fantasy here, even though this isn't literally spelled out. One has to accept the otherwise absurd premise that a man who is born on a ship, willingly spends half a century aboard it without once setting foot on land. Yet the movie is shot so well, and combined with the pleasant music (not "pleasant" as in "puts you to sleep") it pulls you in, especially in the second half. Roth appears too aloof for a while and his character too mysterious and undefined, but his long, very interesting speech to the trumpet player at the end of the movie clarifies a lot in a strange and original way. It's always good to be pleasantly surprised by a movie that starts off not-very promisingly, and then improves so much that it's never boring and even fascinating all the way to the end. It doesn't even matter that 1900 grew up with an American foster parent, but - as Roth - developed a British accent. The movie is good, so I'll leave the nit-picking for some other time...